Barnes & Noble unveils another NOOK: Samsung Galaxy Tab E

Despite regularly appearing new tablets, the book retailer still only forecasts modest growth in its NOOK sales

Samsung seems to put out a new mobile product every week, so it is not surprising that now that Barnes & Noble is depending on Samsung to make its branded eReaders that it, too, should have new products to announce on a regular basis.

The latest product launch is for the Samsung Galaxy Tab E NOOK, a 9.6-inch tablet that will be priced at $249.99.

“We’re proud to partner with Samsung to give Barnes & Noble customers a comfortable, convenient way to enjoy their favorite reading, movies and TV shows on a number of devices and sizes to fit their needs,” said Fred Argir, Chief Digital Officer at Barnes & Noble. “We invite customers to visit their local Barnes & Noble store to learn more and take advantage of the limited-time promotion to trade in an earlier NOOK device to trade up to one of our wonderful new NOOK by Samsung tablets.”

The tablet comes with 16 GB of storage (expandable microSD memory available up to 128GB) – enough for standard, non interactive eBooks, but woefully under sized to handle interactive digital magazines. That’s OK, of course, as B&N’s newsstand features replica editions that are far smaller in file size than Adobe DPS created digital editions.

Early last month B&N released its Q1 2016 results, reporting that its digital content sales had declined 28.0 percent to $37 million, while its device and accessories sales had declined 6.2 percent to $17 million. NOOK losses were $17 million. Despite its new products, the bookseller forecast that NOOK product sales were only expected to rise 1 percent in the next quarter.